Tag Archives: John

Ivy and the Zoo

Usually I like to put pictures with my posts. You know the whole picture is worth a thousand word thing.

Tonight I thought I’d be different.

So here we have pictures of our trip to the zoo, and random things Ivy said after we got home.

When Clara and Ivy were emptying the dishwasher together:

“Clara is so nice to her big sister and she helps with the housework.”

About an hour after Clara and Ivy gave Piper a shower, from which they emerged just as hairy as the dog:

“Do you know why my butt is kinda itchin’? ”Cause of the hair. Pipers hair is on my butt makin’ it itch.”

Ivy’s irrefutable logic in my attempt to eradicate the word potty from our language:

Ivy: “I’m going potty right now!”
Me: “Oh, OK.  You could say I’m going to the bathroom right now – it’s more grown up.”
Ivy: “But I’m not grown up.”

My Editor…

…he knows how to spell, where commas are supposed to go and he’s cute.

A few hours after I publish a post, my faithful editor fixes them. Unfortunately those of you who are getting the first version are missing what my other half does for them, and some days (apparently today was one of them) it’s a lot!.

And so…

Apologies to those of you who subscribe via e-mail and get what is usually the unedited post.

And …

Thanks John, you are the best editor/husband/father of my children/climber of trees/chicken butcher/griller/foot rubber a girl could ask for!

Nerdy Fun

Last April when I first started this blogging thing my very first post was about John.

Specifically it was about John being a chemistry nerd.

Because as much as he tries to deny it – he is.

Unfortunately most of his chem nerd skills are not especially useful on a daily basis.

Smelling different household chemicals to identify them is a neat trick, but it is not particularly useful.

He can do stoichiometry to figure out cooking conversions, but I think that is perhaps making things a bit more difficult than necessary.

Sometimes he can figure out substitutes for a chemical we need but don’t have.  This is useful, but I can only think of twice in the last 10 or so years where it was actually needed.

So while his chemistry skills aren’t a daily boon to us at home (Other than the whole job/paycheck bit, we all appreciate that!) there are times like tonight when being married to a chemistry nerd is fun.

Let me rephrase that a bit. I love my husband, and of all the nerdy chemists I have met he ranks very high on the fun scale. Being married to him is almost always fun.

-Except for when he falls asleep in .2 seconds while I toss and turn. That’s not fun, I hate that. What is it with men and being able to do that anyway? Anyways, as I was saying…-

Tonight there was fun, nerdy chemistry fun.

Tonight there were boxes of dry ice to be had.

A box of dry ice and a bathtub full of water, and we had a good 20 minutes of nerdy chemistry excitement.

Ivy almost had as much fun as John did. As she played in the smoke  she asked, what it was, what was happening, and why it was happening faster than John could spit out answers in three year old language.

On the other hand Clara was less thrilled, while John and Ivy played around she exited the bathroom.

I’m not sure if it was that she couldn’t see her feet, that the rest of her family was acting ridiculous or that she’s not cut out to be a chemistry nerd herself, but whatever the reason, Clara was not impressed!

Persistence

John has been out hunting since the start of the bow season.  Waking up early, hunting evenings, taking trips  and sitting in the cold for weeks, he’s had nothing but a few stories to show for all his efforts.

Finally today, four days into the gun hunt, just when I think he was starting to fear that he had some sort of anti-deer force field around him John came back to the yard with a giant grin and a big buck! Most people called it “a little eight pointer,” but John jumped up and down with a big grin and rightly said “I shot an eight pointer!”
(I probably don’t need to point out that he’s never got anything near that big before!)

Then my Dad went out and got this nice little deer of his own, but we don’t need to talk about that… …because John shot his first eight pointer ever!

Packing

It does not matter how wonderful a place I’m going, what I’m doing there or who I’m going with. I still hate the packing.

-I hate it because our house is always messy and John and I have conversations like, “Have you seen my Swiss army knife?” … “Yes, It’s behind the cedar chest.”

-I hate it because I have to pack myself, and two kids, and two dogs and get all the home chores ready and line up people to take care of things while we are gone.

-I hate it because I can’t remember any of the things I should do without a list.

-I hate it because I always am losing my lists and then spend more time trying to find the list than the items on the list.

-I hate it because I try to pack 12,000 things at once and end up standing in rooms wondering what I came into that room for when I know the next four things I need are somewhere else.

-And I hate it because at some point, no matter if we are leaving for a weekend, a day or a week I just want to give it up and stay home.

Then on top of my general hatred of packing I have to watch John pack.

I try hard to pack in an organized fashion, I use lists, lots of lists, I put things directly into the bag they will be traveling in, I do laundry first so I can find everything easily, and spend the entire time getting crankier and crankier. On the other hand John, spreads his stuff out on whatever empty surface is available and wanders around “playing” with it saying obnoxious things like, “Isn’t’ this fun!?” and “Look at all my cool stuff!” which fuels my general crankiness.  Then for one last insult he stuffs it all into his bags, and knowing that with his strange haphazard ways everything is packed,  immediately falls asleep.  Meanwhile I toss and turn while thinking of the two million more things that must be done before we leave and worry that only one million of them are on a list.

The real kicker.  With all my lists and “organization” I’m still the one who forgets stuff.  I think this is because I have to pack a much larger quantity of things than John (another item that must have been in the “stay at home mom contract” I don’t remember signing) and so I forget a proportional amount of items. Then John brings up the fact that I haven’t seen my keys or my sunglasses since sometime before the 11th of November, and I think I might be hopeless.

Then I hear, “Hey do you know where my flask is?”

and I say , “Yeah, it’s under the bed.”

and I’m pretty sure I’ve got company in my hopelessly unorganized state.

 

Now I must get back to packing, enjoy your weekend, and if you see a set of keys with a pair of sunglasses let me know!

The Great Debate

For years my husband has been calling me a “crackpot.”

I hate to admit it but among his various reasons for this some might have an element of truth to them.  There is one topic though which I refuse to admit to the “crackpottedness” of my ways, Macaroni and Cheese.  I am a firm believer that regular Macaroni and Cheese is disgusting. It is slimy, watery and in general something that should only be fed to small children (I make them eat all the food I don’t like, but that’s a different story) Spiral Mac and Cheese is totally different. Spiral Macaroni and Cheese is something that pregnant woman’s cravings are made of, it’s more robust, with very little slime and tons of cheesy goodness crammed in all the ridges.

I love Spiral Macaroni and Cheese.

I hate all other shapes, I will not eat them.

John being a man and willing to put almost anything dead in his mouth thinks this makes me a “crackpot”. I feel I just have a more discerning palate. One night as I was unjustly accused of being a “crackpot” for this very reason we conducted a brief phone survey of our friends but than accused each other of only calling people who would agree with us… both were guilty as charged. But now I have a blog, and over in the sidebar there is an intriguing option called “polls” so tonight I thought I’d give it a try.

What do you think?

Are you a “crackpot” too?

Or is John right and I am a “crackpot”?

 

Seven Years

Today was our seventh anniversary and my photos of photos in the dark do no justice to the great photos my Aunt Helen took that day.

Now seven years have flown by and the girls are among the biggest of the many changes since that day.  Yet tonight over dinner (a completely scrumptious grilled venison tenderloin) as we reflected over the years we were most awed by how Johns grilling skills have grown. For our first anniversary he also grilled us dinner. While I don’t remember if I ate the resulting chunk of boot leather, the meal was memorable!  Thankfully I hadn’t married him for his grilling skills and he hadn’t married me for my cleaning skills so we are still smiling together today!  Of course now John is the best grill master I know but I still don’t clean the bathroom, looks like I got the good end of this deal!

Certain Death

Now that the roof on the house is done, we’ve moved on to the workshop. After coming to “grips” with my fear of heights by emulating a tree frog  John has had me up on the roof of the workshop helping out again.

Reasons I hate the workshop roof:

1) It is only accessible via extension ladders, those are tall and scary.

2)Getting onto the roof from the scary ladder is even scarier.

3)I’m not even going to talk about getting back onto the ladder.

4) Once on top the roof is flat, but very small, falling in any direction would be certain death.

5)Five turkey vultures were soaring and circling, clearly they knew about the certain death.

So up on the roof, far, far out of my- feet on the ground- element I was, shall we say, a little testy. Later with my feet firmly on the ground I apologized to John and explained that I was just having a hard time dealing with the fact that one of us was going to pitch off the roof and die at any moment.

Then I thought about what I said.

I have since resolved to try to make my last moments with my husband friendlier ones.

Absence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder

Ivy’s recent quotable Dad comments:

“I don’t ask you nicely and politely I only ask dad nicely and politely”

“You don’t love me, DAD loves me.”

“I’m not your kid. I’m Dad’s kid, Clara is your kid.”

Now I like to think that I take all the snotty three year old comments in stride.  I don’t let them get to me, sometimes I think she’s  funny, and most of all I’m very glad that Ivy loves her Dad so much.  Nor do I feel unloved by my girls. Clearly since I am the one required to read bedtime stories, rock girls to sleep, kiss hurt fingers and wipe dirty butts I am dear to them as well.

But sometimes…

When every night when John gets home he is trampled at the door by the dogs and kids, and the only way for me to get my own kiss hello is to wade in pushing everyone else out of the way.

When Clara lights up when she hears him talk, and Ivy can go from problem child to angle at the drop of her hat on hearing his voice.

When unknowingly John will ask Ivy to do something that I had been waiting her out on, and she’ll jump up and go do it.

When Ivy asks where her Dad is ten times a day.

…it starts to get a bit grating in a  you-rotten-kids-do-you-forget-who-spends-the-whole-freakin-day-with-you sort of way.

So when I was the only one home when the girls came back from spending a night at Grandma and Grandpa’s I basked in my two minutes of fame. I loved the lit up faces, the hugs hello, and hearing how much Ivy missed me…

…right up until I heard, “Where’s Dad?”and Clara threw up on me.

I hear absence makes the heart grow fonder, and I’m planning my next vacation!